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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25272535">Dead Again</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryaDmitrievnaLikesSundays/pseuds/MaryaDmitrievnaLikesSundays'>MaryaDmitrievnaLikesSundays</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Amnesia, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Death, Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kidnapping, Memories, Memory Loss, Multi, Whump</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:14:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,038</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25272535</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryaDmitrievnaLikesSundays/pseuds/MaryaDmitrievnaLikesSundays</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Yeah, he’s awake, but he seems out of it. Hang on, let me—“ She covered the speaker and turned to him. “Hey, kid, what’s your name?”</p><p>His brow furrowed. “I—I don’t know,” he muttered.</p><p>Concern painted her face. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”</p><p>The boy felt anxiety creep up in his gut and spread through his veins, freezing his body from the core out. He started to breathe rapidly, heavily, as he searched his mind for his name, his age, anything. It felt like pushing on a wall of darkness. There was nothing there, nothing beyond the language he knew and a few basic items, like the trees around him and the dirt still beneath his legs, now soaked in blood.</p><p>“I don’t know my name.”</p><p>——</p><p>Or, it’s May when Peter Parker disappears from his apartment. It’s December when Bruce finds him working as a cashier, treating him like a stranger and swearing his name is Ben.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bruce Banner &amp; Peter Parker &amp; Natasha Romanov, Bruce Banner &amp; Peter Parker &amp; Tony Stark, May Parker (Spider-Man) &amp; Peter Parker, Michelle Jones &amp; Ned Leeds &amp; Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Ned Leeds &amp; Peter Parker, Peter Parker &amp; Avengers Team, Peter Parker &amp; Natasha Romanov, Peter Parker &amp; Natasha Romanov &amp; Tony Stark, Peter Parker &amp; Pepper Potts, Peter Parker &amp; Steve Rogers, Peter Parker &amp; Tony Stark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>241</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Prologue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hey, y’all!! I’ve had this idea for a long time, and I’m hoping starting this work will help me get more inspired again. I’m still going to finish Holding to the Ground, but I want to get some inspiration back with this work. That said, have fun reading!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A boy opened his eyes.</p><p> </p><p>And above him he saw stars. Thousands and thousands of stars, scattered like freckles, twinkled above him. They provided the only light around him, and if he squinted, he could almost see the clouds of the Milky Way. He could feel something beneath his body, too, and dug his fingers into cold dirt. Stars were nice. Dirt was, too. This was nice.</p><p> </p><p>He would have liked to stay there forever, the cool breeze on his skin, but suddenly the dazzling starlight was interrupted, and a yellow beam of light blinded him. A car’s engine rumbled up next to him, about twenty feet away, before it cut off and the light stopped. He sighed, and his body relaxed.</p><p> </p><p>He heard a car door open and slam shut, and pounding footsteps ran to his side. A woman floated into view, her dark skin and curly hair blocking his view of the stars. He wanted her to move. He wanted to see the stars.</p><p> </p><p>He tried to crane his neck around her, but something cracked and he cried out. It was only then that he realized the pain. His head pounded violently, and his right shoulder felt like it was far from its rightful place. Every breath seared his lungs, and something in his abdomen burned, screaming for attention. <br/><br/></p><p>Eventually, he realized the woman was speaking.</p><p> </p><p>”Hey, kid, you alright? Shit, it’s hard to see—are you hurt?”</p><p> </p><p>He blinked sluggishly was his mind tried to process the questions. Slowly, he shook his head. No, he wasn’t alright. Okay, one question down. Before he could answer the next one, she breathed out a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God you’re okay. I thought you were dead when I saw you there. How did you get all the way out here with no car?”</p><p> </p><p>Okay. So she skipped a question. That was fine. He could answer this one.</p><p> </p><p>Except no, he couldn’t, because before he could even understand what she said, she had drifted away, rambling something about an ambulance and a delinquent.</p><p> </p><p>Slowly, he sat up, wincing at the pain in his side. With a trembling hand, he lifted his shirt (it was wet, why was it wet?) and saw a deep hole in the right side of his stomach, and another one mirroring it on his side. Somehow, he knew it was a bullet hole, and that it had passed through his body. It was still sluggishly oozing blood, and it was only then that he noticed the pool of it that surrounded him, soaking his torn cotton pants. Was he wearing scrubs?</p><p> </p><p>He figured he shouldn’t tell the lady about the bullet hole. She would ask more questions. He took in his surroundings—he was sitting in the dirt, a few feet away from an empty highway lined with tall evergreens and dead grass, which seemed to glow under the soft moonlight.</p><p> </p><p>He turned his attention back to the lady, who was now saying something about a concussion. Who had a concussion?</p><p> </p><p>”Yeah, he’s awake, but he seems out of it. Hang on, let me—“ She covered the speaker and turned to him. “Hey, kid, what’s your name?”</p><p> </p><p>His brow furrowed. “I—I don’t know,” he muttered.</p><p> </p><p>Concern painted her face. “What do you mean, <em>you don’t know</em>?“<br/><br/></p><p>The boy started to feel anxiety creep up in his gut and spread through his veins, freezing his body from the core out. He started to breathe rapidly, heavily, as he searched his mind for his name, his age, anything. It felt like pushing on a wall of darkness. There was nothing there, nothing beyond the language he knew and a few basic items, like the trees around him and the dirt still beneath his legs, now soaked in blood.</p><p><br/>“I don’t know my name.”</p><p> </p><p>A voice in him told him to breathe, a voice that wasn’t his, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t do anything because he didn’t know anything and he was all alone except for this lady that wouldn’t stop asking him questions. He wished he could go back to five minutes ago, just five minutes ago where all he knew was the stars, and he didn’t know anything beyond that.</p><p> </p><p>He scrambled to his feet so quickly the woman jumped back in surprise, ignoring the testing sensation in his side. He looked between the woman and the road, and heard sirens in the distance, sirens that the woman didn’t seem to hear. He didn’t know what would happen when they arrived. He was scared to find out. He didn’t know why he was scared. He didn’t know <em>anything</em>. <br/><br/></p><p>He clamped together the wound in his side, took one last look at the woman, and tore off down the road and into the night.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The One Where The Family Is Broken</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>ATTENTION!!! I rewrote the previous chapter. Well, I actually just deleted a portion that will instead go at the end of this chapter. So if you recognize the ending scene, that’s why. Just thought it could use some more fleshing out.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tony’s coffee was way too hot.</p><p> </p><p>It wasn’t usually this hot. It was usually slightly above lukewarm, just hot enough to be comfortable but not so hot that it distracted him from whatever task he was doing at the same time. That was how he’d drank it for thirty-nine years, and he hadn’t planned on changing it any time soon. <br/><br/></p><p>His coffee machine was broken, then. Because there was no way he’d put his settings wrong today. He couldn’t do that today. Today was the one day a week he could spend the whole time looking for Peter. <br/><br/></p><p>“‘It’s been too long,’” he mumbled in a mocking tone beneath his breath, taking another sip of his scalding coffee. “‘You have to get back to normal’ my ass.”</p><p> </p><p>And yeah, it had been seven months, and there were no leads, and ninety-nine percent of disappearances were dead after a day, and everyone else had given up and gone back to their dark, shitty little lives. But those thoughts made him want to lie down on the floor and vomit, so he didn’t like to think them. Today was one of those days.</p><p> </p><p>He pulled up his map of possible locations. He had eliminated most of the Southern Hemisphere, nearly all of France, and Florida. The most likely spots were somewhere in the triangular region between Boston, Chicago, and the exact center of Canada. That was only a few thousand square miles, and he was narrowing it down every day.</p><p> </p><p>Another sip of his coffee. Another spreadsheet. He found another teenager that had disappeared from the state of New York in the week that Peter had. Then crossed it off his list once he realized that the boy had just fallen asleep on the subway and missed his stop by a few hours.</p><p> </p><p>When the light from his computer began to burn his eyes beyond sight, he shut off the monitor and put his head in his hands.</p><p> </p><p>Seven months.</p><p> </p><p>In the back of his mind, he knew. Knew that seven months was too long. Peter was probably dead. After this much searching, it would be a miracle if they even found his body.</p><p><br/>The minute he accepted that, he’d become just like the rest of his friends, who he barely even spoke to anymore. He’d shut himself in his room for weeks like Bruce, punch a wall so hard the room caved in like Steve, or maybe he’d go full May, find the nearest gun to put to his head and pull the trigger, and how could he blame her? He’d do the same thing if Peter truly was dead, if one of the only things that was still good in the world was gone forever.</p><p> </p><p>But that was purposefully in the back of his mind, exactly where he always pushed it when things got too dark, when the edge of the Tower seemed too appealing. <br/><br/></p><p>He shook the thoughts away. He didn’t have time for that. Tony started to work again, but found he couldn’t concentrate. He cursed. He’d spent too long inside his own head, and now all he could see was different mangled versions of Peter’s body, unseeing eyes in a face bloated from spending days underwater, limp hands that once clutched a gaping wound, a throat bruised from the rope that had been wrapped around it—</p><p> </p><p>“No,” he whispered to himself, tapping his forehead with his fist as if he could hit the thought away.</p><p> </p><p>Fuck. He wasn’t getting anywhere, just thinking himself in circles. Looking at the clock, he only had nine more hours before Pepper forced him to go to bed, and then he would have to wait another week to keep looking for more than a few short hours between meetings and attacks. Nine hours wasn’t enough time to do anything at all, and certainly not with his brain so stopped up.</p><p> </p><p>After a second of trying to produce a coherent thought, he begrudgingly gave over to his body. His stomach had been rumbling through the last four location scans.</p><p> </p><p>”FRIDAY,” he called, pulling up a list of statistics he’d already read a hundred times, “Get someone down here, whoever’s closest.”</p><p> </p><p>”Sure thing, Boss.”</p><p> </p><p>Hardly a minute later, Bruce jogged into the room, looking haggard. “What...happened?” he wheezed.</p><p> </p><p>Tony went to take a sip of his coffee only to find it empty. With a grunt he said, “Go get me some food from the convenience store down the street. Get, like, cheese curls or something, they’re the only store with the brand I like. The ones in the red bag.”</p><p> </p><p>”You...made me run down six flights of stairs...for cheese curls?”</p><p> </p><p>”Oh, did FRIDAY make it sound urgent. Sorry. You can take my card, if you want.”</p><p> </p><p>Tony heard Bruce groan as he left, still breathing heavily. “A please would have been since,” he muttered angrily before letting the door shut behind him.</p><p> </p><p>Tony just rolled his eyes. There were only ninety-six other locations he needed to scan before he could rule out Shreveport, Louisiana.</p><p> </p><p>He blinked away the bullshit clouding his brain, and got back to work.</p><p> </p><p>——</p><p> </p><p>Bruce was freezing.</p><p> </p><p>All the roads were blocked from last week’s alien attack or whatever it was this time, so he had to walk through the December air and New York sludge to pick up cheese curls for Tony. Because somehow, in a tower full of constantly-injured heroes, nobody had any plain cheese curls.</p><p><br/>Of course, he could have told Tony “no,” but that would have set him off, and Bruce didn’t feel like dealing with another one of his seven-hour breakdowns that culminated in multiple tools being thrown at his head. A few blocks of walking was way faster, and saved a lot of emotional burdening.</p><p> </p><p>He hurried into a corner store, something small and just run down enough to feel homey. He’d been here once or twice before<br/><br/><br/></p><p>
  <em>“Can I just get a few bags of Jolly Ranchers and call it a day? It’s better than the food Ned and I eat at school.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>”A human being cannot survive on hard candy alone.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p><em>”Has anyone ever told you you’re no fun, Dr. </em> <em>Banner?”</em></p><p> </p><p>Bruce forced the memory away. Peter was gone, they were pretty much certain. He’d accepted it. He’d gone to therapy. And he wasn’t about to freak out in this dime-a-dozen store, in front of ten civilians and a frazzled security camera, just because he remembered standing in this exact spot with Peter just a year before. <br/><br/></p><p>He shook his head to clear his mind, shivered underneath his coat, and grabbed a bag of cheese curls off the shelf.</p><p> </p><p>With a gloved hand he placed the bag and a chocolate bar on the counter, keeping his gaze on his wallet so he didn’t fumble his credit card to the ground like he always did with gloves on. Finally, he managed to get a good grip on it, and looked up to hand it to the cashier.</p><p> </p><p>And his heart stopped.</p><p> </p><p>Because that wasn’t just some tired, angry cashier who was anxiously watching the clock. This was a boy no older than seventeen, with brown hair longer than he remembered and a frame that was far too thin. This was a boy with large brown eyes, but they were so dull now, so empty. This was a boy he knew, a boy he recognized from a yesterday so long ago.</p><p> </p><p>”...Peter?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Comment, please!!!<br/>And yes, I know it’s short, I’m just getting the exposition down lol</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Comment, please! I might not update for a minute, but I’m proud of it.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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